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Life is too short to deal with fake friends. Quotes like those below will help you rise above.
According to recent statistics, the average life expectancy for an American is currently 78.8 years. Let’s go ahead and round that up to 79, and then multiply 79 by the number of hours in a year, which is 8,760.
That means one can expect approximately 692,000 hours in a lifetime. Subtract the sleep and the work from the life total, and you have 38,200 hours of ostensibly free time. Which of course is largely anything but, given the kids to raise, the errands to run, the home repairs, the time spent at the gym or jogging, and all the rest of it.
Add it all up (or subtract it all, as the case may be) and one conclusion is easy to draw: there’s just no time in life for fake friends and fake people. Only a few ones deserve your time anyway, and the fake ones don’t make the cut.
What is a fake friend, exactly?
Nobody has time for fake friends anymore. But how do you define them? In all the talk about fake friends quotes and fake people, we’ve never actually come across a universal definition, accepted by all. So instead, let’s turn this question on its head:
What makes someone a true friend?
True friends are also not going to be easy to define either, because people are by human nature so complex, unique, and varied. But if enough of the following adjectives can be applied to someone, chances are good that you have a real friend – and maybe even a best friend – on your hands there: caring, reliable, honest, trustworthy, patient, understanding, supportive,
If you have someone like that, cherish them. And more to the point, make sure you are a good friend in return: better to be an honest enemy than a fake friend yourself! (Better than that, be kind and decent but don’t pretend to be a friend to someone you simply don’t care for.)
How do you assess if someone is offering true friendship or not?
Think about it like this: a real friend should make you feel stronger, more self-assured, bolder, freer, and overall better about yourself, while a fake friend can do the opposite, making you question yourself, doubt your own choices, and reduce your sense of self-worth.
A quick way to assess a friendship is to peruse some of the best friend quotes, those that speak to a genuine, balanced, and positive friendship, and ask yourself honestly if you can apply them to the relationship you are assessing. And as a true friendship is always, without exception, predicated on mutual respect and trust, go ahead and factor in some of the best trust quotes as you examine a friendship as well.
Never doubt your gut instinct – though you do need to do a so-called gut check on yourself before acting on emotional responses to people. If something just feels off about the way you and a person relate, it’s alright to politely end or at least diminish the bond between you.
Friends can be like family, and of course to real family you always owe some degree of caring and support. But to a fake friend, you owe nothing. To yourself, however? You owe the world. And you’re worth it.
To help tell whether or not that person is the real deal or is a “frenemy” best left in the past of your life, consider these 55 fake friend quotes. If a good number of them resonate, it may be time to cut those ties with each false friend in your life. Which, if you’ll harken back to all that math we did earlier, isn’t losing anything, of course: when you lose false friends you gain time back into your life. All you’re losing is baggage.
Fake friend quotes that can help you examine the relationships in your life
1. “A true friend never gets in your way unless you happen to be going down.” – Arnold H. Glasow
2. “No person is your friend who demands your silence, or denies your right to grow.” – Alice Walker
3. “Fake friends are like shadows: always near you at your brightest moments, but nowhere to be seen at your darkest hour. True friends are like stars, you don’t always see them but they are always there.” – Habeeb Akande
4. “The strong-minded rise to the challenge of their goals and dreams. The weak-minded become haters.” – Steve Maraboli
5. If I doubt your intentions I will never trust your actions.” – Carlos Wallace
6. “Spend your time with those who love you unconditionally, not with those who only love you under certain conditions.” – Suzy Kassem
7. “Letting go of toxic people in your life is a big step in loving yourself.” – Hussein Nishah
8. “You create more space in your life when you turn your excess baggage to garbage.” – Chinonye J. Chudolue
9. “Stop falling for those who won’t raise you up in the future.” – Michael Bassey Johnson
10. “A friend to all is a friend to none.” – Aristotle
11. “It makes no sense to try to extend a friendship that was only meant to be a season into a lifetime.” – Mandy Hale
12. “False friendship, like the ivy, decays and ruins the walls it embraces; but true friendship gives new life and animation to the object it supports.” – Richard Burton
13. “Before you count your friends, make sure you can count on them. Some friends are only around when they want something from you but are never there when you need something from them.” – Rashida Rowe
14. “I’ve got more respect for someone who comes out and says they don’t like me than for the ones who act like they do but talk bad about me when I’m not around.” – Mitchell Perry
15. “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” – Martin Luther King Jr.
16. “A friend who stands with you in pressure is more valuable than a hundred ones who stand with you in pleasure.” – Edward G. Bulwer-Lytton
17. “There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends. I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.” ― Jane Austen
18. “What a desperate, pathetic fool I was. Time after time, my ‘friends’ had shown me their true colors. Yet, I still wanted to believe they were sorry for causing me pain.” ― Jodee Blanco
19. “This is what happens. You tell your friends your most personal secrets, and they use them against you.” ― Sophie Kinsella
20. “Not all toxic people are cruel and uncaring. Some of them love us dearly. Many of them have good intentions. Most are toxic to our being simply because…they aren’t inherently bad people, but they aren’t the right people for us. And as hard as it is, we have to let them go.” – Daniell Koepke
21. “You got nothing to lose. You don’t lose when you lose fake friends.” – Joan Jett
22. “If people are hating on you it’s often because they are: 1. Threatened by you, 2. Jealous of you or 3. Feeling like you’re above them so they put you down to feel better about themselves. The greatest people have haters for a reason, so take it as a compliment.” ― Jeanette Coron
23. “Some men can love forever, some for six years, some for six months, and others for six hours.” ― Michael Bassey Johnson
24. “The word ‘friend’ is a label anyone can try on. You decide who is best suited to wear it.” ― Carlos Wallace
25. “Sometimes it’s not the person who changes, it’s the mask that falls off.” – Mhaj Porras
26. “True friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend on darkness and ignorance.” – Henry David Thoreau
27. “Fire false friends as early as possible. Do it before they dig out the dream seeds you’ve planted. The earlier, the better; the quicker, the safer.” – Israelmore Ayivor
28. “There’s no fall greater than one from a burnt bridge.” ― Carlos Wallace
29. “With success comes the never-ending task of blocking or weeding out fake friends.” ― Mokokoma Mokhonoana
30. “At some point you have to realize that some people can stay in your heart but not in your life.” – Sandi Lynn
31. “An honest enemy is better than a best friend who lies.” – Vandi Tanko
32. “Be very careful of who you share your problem with, remember that not every friend that smiles at you is your best friend.” – Kemmy Nola
33. “Some people are willing to betray years of friendship just to get a little bit of the spotlight.” – Lauren Conrad
34. “A true friend is one who overlooks your failures and tolerates your success!” – Doug Larson
35. “Sometimes the person you’d take a bullet for ends up being behind the gun.” – Tupac Shakur
36. “Eliminate those fake friends who seem real when you have something and disappear when you have nothing.” – Rashida Rowe
37. “People may not always tell you how they feel about you, but they will always show you. Pay attention.” – Keri Hilson
38. “Having fake friends is like hugging cactus. The tighter you hug, the more pain you get.” – Riza Prasetyaningsih
39. “A friend is one that knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become, and still, gently allows you to grow.” – William Shakespeare
40. “The jealous are troublesome to others, but a torment to themselves.” – William Penn
41. “The worst part of success is trying to find someone who is happy for you.” – Bette Midler
42. “An insincere and evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast; a wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.” – The Buddha
43. “I no longer have the energy for meaningless friendships, forced interactions, or unnecessary conversations. – Joquesse Eugenia
44. “Lots of people want to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.” – Oprah Winfrey
45. “It’s hard to tell who has your back, from who has it long enough just to stab you in it.” – Nicole Richie
46. “Being betrayed is one of the most valuable lessons life can teach.” – Shania Twain
47. “To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal. You see, I could conceive death, but I could not conceive betrayal.”― Malcolm X
48. “Betray a friend and you’ll often find you have ruined yourself.” — Aesop
49. “I love fake people provided they are mannequins.”― Pushpa Rana
50. “Life is too short for fake butter or fake people.”― Karen Salmansohn
51. “The glory of friendship is not the outstretched hand, nor the kindly smile, nor the joy of companionship; it is the spiritual inspiration that comes to one when you discover that someone else believes in you and is willing to trust you with a friendship.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
52. “It’s always the ones with the dirty hands pointing the fingers.” – Sonya Teclia
53. “Feigned interest is worse than brutal honesty.”― Stewart Stafford
54. “If they talk about other people with you, they will talk about you with other people.”― Carlos Wallace
55. “You don’t lose friends because real friends can never be lost. You lose people masquerading as friends, and you’re better for it.” ― Mandy Hale
How to cut a fake friend out of your life
So you’ve read through the quotes about fake friends (and a few about true friends that shed light on what fake friends are like by contrast) and yes, as it turns out, you’ve got some fake people crowding your life?
Then it’s time for you to rise to the occasion and lose fake friends without creating genuine enemies. There is an art and a grace to ending a false friendship, and it’s admirable of you to take the high road and remain decent and kind even as you sever the ties of toxicity.
First, though, you need to be secure in your own commitment to end a friendship, because fake friends are often very good at leaving their tentacles wrapped around you, insidiously keeping themselves attached to you even after you have tried to move away. If you are sincere in your desire to end a friendship and the methods briefed here don’t work, then go ahead and be a touch more acerbic about things. Or a lot more.
Before you torch that bridge, though, you can first simply start saying no to the person. You can say no to plans, no to phone calls or video meetups, you can reply: “Hey sorry, too busy to chat right now” to texts or messages, you can say no to a loan request for a book or record (and of course to money), and on it goes. Most people will, in time, whether consciously or not, realize that you have closed the gates and will retreat of their own volition.
And then, somewhere down the line, you may want to go ahead and acknowledge the faded out friendship to the person, just to nail things shut. You can use language like: “Listen, I just want to acknowledge the fact that we have grown apart and I am OK with that, I think it’s better for both of us, and I hope you have a great rest of your life.”
If the slow fade is not working and the fake friend (at this point a real pest and problem) is still seeking to stay in your orbit, it’s time to rephrase that conclusive statement and apply it more proactively, as in: “Listen, I don’t feel like we bring out the best in each other as friends and I have decided things will be better if our lives continue apart from one another, but I hope you have a great rest of your life.”
In an extreme case, as noted, you do have the right to be harsh when merited. Just remember that someone who was false, conniving, backstabbing, or any such thing when you were “friends” will be truly awful once you’re not, and they may go out of their way to hurt you. The split is likely worth the risk, and your real friends will have your back, but it’s always better to gently close the door than burn things to the ground when you can.